‘We Live In Constant Fear' Murder Is Rare. Domestic Violence Against Women Is Not

This week, as the grim details about what happened to Sarah Everard in her final hours were revealed at the Old Bailey, there has been a sense of despair among women, and the campaigners pushing to make society safer for them.

- Alexandra Topping

The hope that Everard’s murder would bring about rapid change has all but evaporated. On 18 September , nearly seven months after the 33-year-old was killed, a member of the public found the body of schoolteacher Sabina Nessa in Cator Park , south-east London.

In between the two deaths a further 80 women were killed in the UK, according to Karen Ingala Smith of the Counting Dead Women project. That brings the total for 2021, which she is sure is an under estimate, to at least 109. “After Sarah was killed there was a big outcry and people said it felt like a sea change, but I just I can’t see it like that,” she said.

“In between Sarah and Sabina, there were so many women killed and we don’t have a huge outpouring of anger and empathy and grief for everyone. As a society we seem to find these deaths as somehow acceptable.”